You're seven tonight, but let me back up to Hosea, chapter four, chapters four through 10 are written, we said, in the reformat, which is a lawsuit format taken up by God against the nation Israel. So this book is dealing with God's discipline within within his own household under court proceedings. So chapter four is the general summary of this lawsuit. And you can see this from verses one and two. For the Lord has a case or a wreath against the inhabitants of the land, because there is no stability. OK, faithfulness, word for stability, or chesed, no stability, no loyal love, no knowledge of God in the land. OK, that's the general statement there of the theological evil, which breaks out into verse two type evil, which is social evil, swearing, deception, murder, stealing and adultery. So that, again, is a general statement there made at the introduction of the case. And now we're in chapter six and seven. We're looking at all the details of the social sins that break out of that theological evil of verse one. Now, we've dealt considerably with theological evil, the suppression of the knowledge of God that is quite natural to the same nature. And the nation Israel failed to know God in every detail of their lives. They failed. to learn loyalty to him. And so now in the case, we're watching the fallout of that failure in the social sphere, how it affects society at large. So loyalty to God, as we said last week, is the chief aim of sanctification. And God trained that nation to learn loyalty to him for 700 years. And at the end of 700 years, there was no loyalty. And therefore, you begin to see the nation fall to pieces. And all kinds of social chaos begins to take over society. Now, that same principle works in general for all nations that go negative volition to the word of God and they kick God to the curb in every area of life. When a nation does that, you can bet your very last dollar that the whole society is going to fall to pieces around you. It doesn't matter how great the economy is. It'll be destroyed. It doesn't matter how great the military is. It'll fall to pieces. It doesn't matter how great the reputation is of that country. Once a nation abandons God, God abandons the nation. Now, God says, in effect, basically, that if you don't want me around and you don't want my restraining grace, then fine, you can have it your way and we'll see how you like that. And he just starts pulling back the grace and gradually we clobber ourselves. Now, the clobbering we saw last week at the end of chapter six. was these pockets of professional criminals all over the Northern Kingdom. They were being hired to carry out vengeance killings. Murder was rampant. That was the main social disturbance or sin that we were studying last week as a fallout of their failure to learn loyalty. And we said that you have basically two facets of murder, as you always have with every sin. The actual overt murder of an individual But also there's the underlying desire to murder what the Bible calls hatred. Now, everybody realizes this. I mean, nobody just picks up a knife one day and goes out and slit somebody's throat and there's absolutely no reason behind it whatsoever. Obviously, there's a mental attitude, sin of hatred already there. So murder in the Bible is far more than just the overt killing of an innocent person. Murder and the spirit of murder actually has all kinds of facets in the Mosaic law. Some things that you would never think are placed under murder are in the Old Testament placed in the spirit of murder. For example, just the neglect of taking care of an elderly person. Just, you know, feeding tube falls out of their mouth and you just don't want to get off your tail and put it back in because you're too concerned about you. Now, that is the spirit of murder under the Old Testament law. That's murder. And so don't confine murder just to someone who uses a gun or a knife on somebody. It goes far, far deeper than that. Now, this week, we want to deal with a second fallout of their failure to learn loyalty. And these are the problems of fraud and deceit. This passage in Chapter 7 sheds some light on the inner workings of our sin nature, the mental processes that we go through that eventually work their way out into overt social sin that is habitual. Habitual sins, as most habits, all habits don't take too long to get started. I just do it a few times and then there's a habit and then we reinforce that habit through a cyclical pattern. And each time we go through the cycle, we find ourselves one rung lower on the ladder and it becomes easier and easier and easier to go through that cycle till we're all in a ball of wax and it reaps chaos in society. Now, the general principle starts in Hosea 6.11. Okay, 6.11b. Okay. actually goes with Chapter 7. So the verse division is unfortunate, but you can clearly see that the word starting when. Connects with Chapter 7 when OK, so we'll start in the middle of verse 11. Yeah, verse 11. When I restore the fortunes of my people, when I would heal Israel, the iniquity of Ephraim is uncovered and the evil deeds of Samaria, for they deal falsely or fraudulently. There's our word. That's the key word. The thief enters in bandits raid outside. And they do not consider in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness. Now their deeds are all around them. They're before my face with their wickedness. They make the king glad and the princes with their lives. Now, this is this is in the form of a principle. OK, when I restore the fortunes of my people, when I would heal Israel, we could translate as whenever I go to restore her, whenever I go to heal my people. And what this is saying is that God makes attempts to heal the nation. OK, this is a period in Israel's history when she's wounded. We say she's got a big open wound and God is trying to go in. He's trying to heal the wound. So the way he does this is he sends his prophets and the prophets have the word of God and the word of God can heal these people if they'll respond to the prophet's word. And so he says, I can heal you if you'll turn to me. So he's initiating with the nation. He's asking them to respond to him. Turn to me and I'll heal you. Now, that's the attempt that he made during this period to heal and restore the nation. But every time he goes in to heal him, it says that the iniquity of Ephraim is uncovered and the evil deeds of Samaria. Now, here's the so here's the picture. I send my prophets in with the word of God to mend your wound. And as the word goes forth, we find there are even more transgressions surfacing. It's sort of like a doctor who goes in to do the surgery and he has a specific task or operation that he's going to undertake. And once he gets in to remove whatever or fix whatever it is, he finds more, which is a common thing. And so God sends in the prophets. They shine the light of the word, the light of the word of God on the problem so they can get it all fixed. And the light of the word reveals there's more sin, there's more evil. And so we have a bigger problem than we thought here. Four, OK, and that four introduces a three part indictment against the nation. And this introduces us to the eighth commandment. Remember, the prophets bring indictment against the nation in terms of the law of Moses, that was the law or rule of life for the Israelite, and they broke the treaty and they will bring indictment then against the nation for breaking that treaty. And they will do so on the basis primarily of the Ten Commandments. Here's what you have to understand about the Ten Commandments, is that they're the base, they're the foundation. And all the other laws, all the other specifics, all the case law and so forth, is merely more detailed explanation of those Ten Commandments. They're just giving you all the variances. That's why I say murder. Murder is like just not even taking care of an elderly person, you know, just being neglectful. Because that is an element that is involved under the breaking of thou shalt not murder. So there's a three-part indictment here. The first is general, and then there are two subdivisions of this general accusation. For they deal falsely, that's the general. It should read, they practice fraud. It's a word for business practices that are fraudulent. They practice fraud. Then to show how they practice fraud, or the means that he uses to divide it up into two secondary instruments, one, the thief enters in, and two, bandits right outside. The obvious contrast in that verse is the individual thief on the inside of the house, burglary, and the group of bandits outside the house on the highway. So one is an individual thief. The other is a gang of thieves. But there's something deeper than just the individual thief here burglarizing a home or the gang of thieves beating someone up on their property on the road. The gang of bandits would technically include any corporation of men. That's correct. It could be a crime syndicate, could be a corporate business, could be a religious business, all of whom then use their power to defraud people. So these two categories include the kid off the streets, the punk who breaks and enters the individual thief. But it also includes the big corporations that defraud people as they allocate all their power and use it to plunder. So in verse three. And down in verse three, he's gonna add the government as the third entity that engages in fraud. Okay, so we'll find three avenues of fraud. The individual stealing property, the corporation stealing property, and the government stealing property. Okay, all three are means of breaking the eighth commandment, that you shall not steal. Now, we're gonna go through some of the verses back in the law that explain what it means, you shall not steal. You say, well, we all know what you shall not steal means. It means you just don't go take somebody's things, and that's stealing. Sorry, you missed it. OK, we all thought we knew what stealing meant until we actually got into the details of the law and you find out, boy, it's a lot broader than this. You know, it's a lot more than just that. It goes way, way farther than just you taking somebody's things. So we'll go back and look at some verses about stealing. And all we're going to be doing here is just amplifying what the law of Moses says about the Eighth Commandment. OK. That's what the details of the law did. They amplified these 10 commandments. And this is how the Holy Spirit brings conviction. So you can't be convicted by the Holy Spirit on generalities. The only way the Holy Spirit will ever bring conviction in your life is on very specific points. OK, that are based in scriptural scriptural norms. Now, that shouldn't strike you as too unusual, because if the Holy Spirit's objective in bringing conviction of sin is true, how could he reach How could he reach his objective by just convicting you of some general thing? I mean, if some woman comes in my office and she says, my husband's a jerk, what do I do? Well, you haven't told me anything. How is he being a jerk? You have to give me more information. What exactly is he doing that makes him a jerk? Or if some man comes in and he says, well, my wife just doesn't respect me. Well, you haven't told me anything at all, okay? You have to tell me what it is he did that is disrespectful. Then we can start to work with the problem. So the Holy Spirit is showing Israel how they broke the commandment. You shall not steal. OK, he's getting details. And since we're dealing with property and property rights, then ultimately this gets traced back further than the Moses mosaic law gets traced all the way back to the first divine institution in Genesis 1, 26 to 28. See, the first divine institution is responsible labor, labor or dominion. And God set out that institution to go forth, man to go forth and to subdue and to have dominion over the earth. OK, and so there is work to do and work generates a product now to even get going. OK, there has to be such a thing as property that man is responsible for. If man had anything to work, didn't have anything to work with, then we couldn't be held responsible for anything. OK, so God gave man the earth as his property to work and make productive. That's the whole purpose of the first divine institution. God has made man in his image to work the earth and develop it for God. And some commentators have gone so far as to say that the only the only thing that was actually at creation in ship shape condition was the Garden of Eden. And if you step one foot outside that Garden of Eden, it was just barren wasteland and that the program for Adam was to cultivate that garden and spread it over the face of the whole earth and clean up that barrenness. Now, that labor is what will later be protected. under the commandment, you shall not steal. So back in Genesis 126, we have the origin of the concept of private property. And that's where all begins. Christianity, and don't ever compromise this point when you're in a discussion or you'll be in a load of trouble. This is an axiom of the Christian faith. OK, said another way, we have just simply said that socialism is anti-biblical and can in no way ever be reconciled to scripture. The Christian socialist just hasn't read very carefully. Even on page one of the scripture is presupposed that there is such a thing as private property over which men are responsible and that therefore it can be stolen. If it wasn't ours, it couldn't be stolen. There's just a general public. What are you going to go down to the post office and steal your brick? You know, try it. It's not going to work. Now, that's the basis of the commandment. You shall not steal. I mean, how could someone steal? if there's no such thing as private property. So the commandment not to steal presupposes private property that is available to steal. Then we have the various means that man has conjured up to steal, and this can be in verse 1, the individual and the corporation, and in verse 3, the government. Okay, all three of these are means or agencies or agents used to steal. Now contrast that, okay, the agencies of theft, with some more truths from Scripture as to how to acquire property, properly. There are three ways that the Bible speaks of as the proper way to acquire property. OK, there are basically only these three ways. All other ways are illegitimate. The first way is to work for it. Again, first divine institution, work and earn money, earn capital and purchase property. Second, you can inherit it and the nation Israel, each family was given a plot of land. And it would be passed down through family inheritance. They didn't have inheritance taxes. Inheritance taxes are a form of theft. You're taking away the hard earned goods of a family. And scripturally, there's no right for man to do that. So we have working. First of all, working. Then we have inheriting. And the third way is by gift. Someone can give you some piece of property or something, some item. Now, these are three godly ways of acquiring property. Theft. is always the fourth way. Theft wants to skirt around these three legitimate means of acquiring property. So let's turn back to Exodus 22 and have a study of what theft is, a short one. These are just some examples of theft. So we've sort of broadened our ideas of what it means, you shall not steal. Now, as we go through this passage, I want you also to notice something. Notice how theft is dealt with in the nation Israel. There's a biblical solution to the theft problem, and it's not locking someone in jail for six months. They didn't do that because that didn't solve the problem. Every time someone steals something, there is a destruction of wealth. Now, how do you solve the problem of the destruction of wealth by confining someone in a jail? You haven't solved anything. In fact, what you've done is you've destroyed more wealth because now you've got to support the building that they've got to be confining, the electricity, three hot meals a day, TV, library, and everything else that goes along with the program. So it's not solving the problem. OK, to confine someone, we're just destroying more wealth. Restitution is the biblical answer to theft. If someone comes and steals your car, the answer in scripture is that he doesn't just go buy you a car. He goes and buys you four cars. How would you like that? No wonder, you know, when a person gets caught stealing today and they go before the judge and says, OK, this time you'll slap on the wrist, go home. Well, they do it again because they have no respect for labor and what labor can produce. In the Mosaic law, if you steal, you're not walking out free. There's restitution, so watch for it. Exodus 22, 1. If a man steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it, in other words, it's no longer in his possession now, you're not getting it back. He shall pay five oxen for the ox and four sheep for the sheep. Several things to notice about this verse. First, they've gone on to someone else's property, taken property away from their property and sold it or killed it. And in that case, he must pay restitution four or five times what he stole. Now, there's several reasons for this. This isn't just trying to be mean. One is because you have to replace the goods that were stolen, first of all. But the addition is that there were lost profits for the time that the good was out of the possession of the owner. So all the time it was gone, the owner couldn't use it for whatever use he needed to generate profit. You also have the fact that just because your good was stolen, It doesn't mean that you're always going to get an equal replacement. If my car is stolen, it wouldn't be that big a deal if it was. But let's say it's worth $250 book value. I probably could replace that thing for $250 for something that runs. And what about the inconvenience? During all the time I don't have the car, I've got to take a taxi or something. So what about all that? So to cover all those things, as well as just the emotional turmoil of having to deal with the whole situation, the Bible puts the mark at 400 to 500 percent restitution. You see, this law has wisdom built into it. When you go through this and you read these, I don't want you to say, oh, well, that's Exodus 22, that's the Mosaic law and so forth, has no application to us as the church. No, we're not under it as a law system, but look for the wisdom principles. Don't be so naive as to think that God would just say something randomly. and have no wisdom principles underlying it. There are certain reasons why the law is designed this way. If you can think for just a moment, what do you suppose would be one of the benefits if the courts went over to a restitution concept rather than a rehabilitation concept? Number one, what would have to happen to the person who stole? Well, he'd have to work his tail off Okay? And in the very process of working his tail off to pay off what he stole times, you know, up to 400, 500%, he's saying, look, here's a habit pattern I've never picked up. He's actually having to work for once in his life to actually produce something. And so you're generating a new behavior pattern in him. And he's not sitting in jail, in other words, with 30 other criminals picking up new techniques on how to steal better when I get out of here so I don't get caught. So many of these punishments have wisdom just built right into them. Exodus 22, 4 has another concept of theft. Verse 4, if what he stole is actually found alive in his possession, whether an ox or a donkey or a sheep, he shall pay double. OK, so in this case, restitution is only 200 percent. Why not four or five hundred percent? Because he got the exact property that was stolen back. OK, so he does have equal replacement in this case. So now all we're dealing with is, well, the animal's gone for some time and he couldn't get profit out of that way and so forth, emotional turmoil. So the restitution in this case is an esteem. OK, so you can see, again, there's wisdom to all this. Further, verses five and six. OK, now this gets into an area you never think of when it comes to you shall not steal. But this is part of that commandment. So pay attention to it and see how far these these commandments were. OK, don't you know, when you read these, when you're reading the Old Testament, if you read the Bible to yourself, don't don't read these real, real fast, because you'll you'll miss a certain sensitivity. Now, watch verse five. If a man lets a field or a vineyard be grazed bare and lets his animal loose so that it grazes in another man's field, he shall make restitution from the best of his own field and the best of his own vineyard. If a fire breaks out, let's see, that's just negligence for his own property. And then he does something stupid. See, that's that's death. Verse six, if a fire breaks out and spreads to thorn bushes so that stacked grain or the standing grain or the field itself is consumed, he who started the fire shall surely make restitution. This deals with what we would call accidental liability. This would be considered in scripture as a part of you shall not steal. Now, you see, we think that we understand the commandments all of a sudden, the Bible goes and says something like, Well, you should not say, oh yeah, physically I shouldn't take a pack of bubblegum. The Bible says you steal when you don't care for another person's property. It's just the act of neglect for someone else's property. That's stealing. You don't have to be guilty of physically removing bubblegum. You can be guilty just by not taking care of someone else's property, being neglectful. That's basically the underlying concept of theft, is that you just don't give a you know what about other people's things. You don't care. Now, we have a serious problem with this in our society. I mean, just look at the kids. I mean, you put them on school campus, they tear the thing to pieces in two hours, you know. And it's not only when they do that to other people's stuff, it's when they do it to their own stuff. I have a theory about that. And that's the idea that basically we have we're out of control. Here we are. We come up to Christmas. Monetarily, we're out of control with how much stuff we've got to buy our kids for Christmas every year. I mean, I remember talking to Jack Culverson about this one time. He's like, well, you know, we were happy to get one thing for Christmas, you know, and here we are, we shower with, you know, all sorts of games, all sorts of toys, all sorts of flashing lights, you know, it goes on and on and on. And what do you think the kids do? They tear their stuff up. Why tear it up? Well, we just get more. Just keep bringing it in. Loads of it. Wheelbarrow is just sitting in my room while I tear it up. And so, you know, no respect for labor, no respect for property, no respect whatsoever. And that's where we are. And this is all theft, by the way. Yeah, little bitty kids, thefts, thieves. Now, there are some more crimes which we'll look at. Exodus 22, 16, another particular area that you'd never dream would be counted as theft. If a man seduces a virgin who is not engaged and lies with her, he must pay a dowry for her to be his wife. So here virginity can be stolen. Who did it belong to? Well, it belonged to her future husband, her right man. And so the man who took it stole from her future husband. It was hers to give to her husband. Now she doesn't have it to give to him, can never be restored. So the penalty is this man has to pay the dowry and he has to take her as his wife. Now, what's the wisdom in that? Well, here you have a girl. Just think she's damaged goods in that society. She doesn't have any virginity to give to her husband. And so the word of God says, if you're responsible enough to play around and have sex outside of marriage and you're responsible enough to marry that girl and pay the dowry, and that's your responsibility. So that's another form of theft that's embedded in here. OK, imagine how that might transform society. Now, as we look at these, try to catch the spirit of the text. OK, there's just there's a spirit or a mental attitude that accompanies this whole thing. And that's what you want to kind of capture. As you look at the details, you shall not steal. It basically means you respect property, not just yours, but other people's as well. Now, let's turn to Hosea 7. Having seen some of what you shall not steal means, and there are many other variations, we don't have time to go through them all. But now when he says in Hosea 7, 1, that they deal falsely or they deal fraudulently, whether it's an individual, the corporation or the government in verse 3, Now, what are we going to think of? OK, we're just going to think of somebody, you know, just breaking and entering a burglar or something. Nowhere to think much wider than that. Sex outside of marriage. Stealing someone that's under this. OK, it could be simply just neglect of somebody else's property. You know, that could have been the main thing that was going on in the Northern Kingdom. We're not told. OK. But it's just the I don't care attitude. So you see, these commands are a lot more than just the narrow concept that we often think. So when we read in Hosea seven, verse two, they and they can they do not consider in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness. Now, their deeds are all around them. They're before my face. When he says that at the beginning, that they do not consider in their hearts, the heart in the Old Testament, the L.A.V. L.A.V. L.A.V. really, but pronounced L.A.V. OK. The heart in the Old Testament is a very broad term and encompasses the mind, the conscience and other things here. What he's saying is they do not. Their consciences are destroyed. They don't even consider in their conscience. All this theft is going on doesn't even prick their conscience, we would say. So they destroy the conscience. How do you destroy the conscience? Well, God's word comes to you and your conscience says, do the word and you say no. And so that has a negative effect on your conscience. Next week, the word comes and your conscience says, do the word a little softer, but it still says, do the word. And you say no. And you do this week in, week out. And you say no, no, no, no, no to the word of God. And you keep going through that cycle. And every time you go through that cycle, you violate the conscience one more time and you find yourself one more rung down on that ladder until you violate it and you violate it and you violate it point after point after point until you eventually shut your conscience down. You sear it. is how the New Testament calls it. And we call that a condition, a condition of deep, deep carnality, or some people call it compound carnality. Now, their deeds are all around them, he says. Now, that that's a picture in the Hebrew, it's a word picture. The picture is this. These peoples have wrapped themselves up in a blanket, so they don't think that God can see them anymore. OK, so they're all wrapped up and hidden from God. And God says, you blanket heads, I'm right here. I'm staring you right in the face. I can see all the property theft of you people. Okay, that's the concept in verse two. I'm right here and you have so destroyed your conscience by violating it and violating and violating it repeatedly that now you think that you're all wrapped up in a blanket and because you can't see me, I can't see you. I'm standing right in front of you. Now, it's always that way with our sin. You're not getting away with anything. That's ridiculous. But these people think that they are. Now, Hosea 7, 3, here it extends into the area of government. So with verse 3 together with verse 1, we now have the three agencies of theft, the individual, the corporation, and the government. With their wickedness, they make the king glad and the princes with their lies. Okay, so you have political expediency as the order of the day throughout the entire social order. The people that were supposed to be, you know, the leaders of the people, supposed to be the godly examples to the entire society were the people committing the thievery in mass. It's all power lust. It's control lust. And they can't control their sin natures any longer. The sin nature is just spinning out of control here at all levels of society. Now, we want to conclude tonight with verses 4 through 7. This is a strange section dealing with a baker. Yes, sir? Okay. These are gigantic ovens. You put a grill to fire in, and then when you heat it up, it will break the coals out. Well, some people say these are the portable ovens here, the clay ones. Okay. Oh, yummy. Yummy. If he cheated you, like he did some kind of fractional sitting on the bread. Okay. Fortunately, in this case, the baker is not going to get roasted himself, but we'll see. Okay. The baker. That's a life of life. I fry this kind of thing. That's Lex Talia on us. All right. Now, there are certain procedures to bread baking in the ancient world, and these procedures illustrate the same procedures that we go through as we work our way into deep, deep carnality. So that's why this strange section is in there. Now, that word in verse one that we said is the word fraud. They deal falsely, the word falsely. That word also has an element of deceit. And if you think about thievery, thievery always involves some aspect of deceit. OK, so but here we're going to shift over from the emphasis we just emphasized on theft over to the side of deceit that underlies the theft and how this works its way out in our sin nature. OK, this gets us into some political intrigue and conspiracy in the Northern Kingdom and the high levels of government. So before we get into the baker and the oven, let's go to Genesis four to see the principle. It's easier to see in Genesis four, and then we'll come back to Hosea. the oven and see what he's talking about, why it's talking about making bread in a hot oven. There's a there's a parallel, obviously, and now Genesis four, seven, we have a fundamental principle of the same nature. This is God to Cain, right? Cain and Abel. You remember the story. If you do well, Cain, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, Sin is crouching at the door, and its desire is for you, but you must master it. Now, what this is picturing, where it says sin is crouching at the door, is the picture of an animal ready to attack. He's all tense. Every muscle in the body of the animal is tense and is ready to go. Now, why does God use this crouching and this attack picture for the sin nature? Because there's a warning in here to Cain about the path he's taking in life. the road he's going down. It's also a warning to every believer. If you do not do well, see there, that means if you make it a habit of defying the Word of God and destroying your conscience by going negative to the Word, negative to the Word, over and over and over, then sin is crouching at the door. And your sin nature lies there like an animal that's just poised to attack. It's just ready to explode. And so all this negative volition gets locked up in the sin nature when we train it in negative volition repeatedly. And eventually, the sin nature gets to the point where it's beyond our control. OK, there's a point at which we can control it, yes, but the more we go negative to the word of God, the less ability we have to control it and the sin nature becomes like a wild animal and we can't control it any longer. And you've all seen this in society. You know, there's people who say, well, I don't have a problem with eating. I don't have a problem with drinking. I don't have a problem with lusting, you know, and it's these very people that have a problem with eating and drinking and lusting. It has reached a point where they have so trained their sin nature to respond to whatever stimulus it is that they just can't stop it from responding to whatever stimulus it is. And if they say they don't have a problem with it, they're just in denial. And we've all seen it. So every time the stimulus appears in front of them, just like clockwork, the sin nature pounces on it. OK, and it fulfills its desire. It's hungry. So let's look at the illustration of the baker and his oven. And then we're going to look at history for a moment, see what he's referring back to. Hosea 7, 4. They are all adulterers. OK, now there's your word for idolaters, the spiritual adultery. They are all idolaters. The idolater is the nation here that is not responding to their right God. And therefore, they have created a negative vacuum in their soul. See, the nation Israel is made for her God. When she rejects him, it's like a right woman rejecting her right man. And immediately she begins to respond to something else. And the something else that they began to respond to in the nation was all the wrong gods and goddesses, all the idols, all the imaginations of their own heart. And God says they're all idolaters. Now, he makes the analogy. OK, the comparison is introduced by the word like in verse four. They're all adulterers like an oven. OK, verse five is a parenthetical remark. So we're going to skip over that when we get there on over to verse six and then we'll come back to five. So let's start the analogy in verse four and just read through. Skipping verse five. They are all adulterers, like an oven heated by the baker who ceases to stir up the fire from the kneading of the dough until it is leavened. Verse six. For their hearts are like an oven as they approach their plotting. Their anger smolders all night. In the morning it burns like a flaming fire. All of them are hot like an oven and they consume their rulers. All their kings have fallen. None of them calls on me. Well, there's maybe the baker there. Not the baker himself. Somebody else gets roasted, don't they? We'll learn who. Now, let's look at this through the ancient bread making procedures. Like an oven heated by the baker. Here's what they did. The baker would start his fire in the evening. And he would just leave the fire. He let it smolder all night long. And he'd leave the dough till it was leavened. So he'd get the fire started. He'd get the dough going. And he'd leave them. OK, then in the morning he would rise up, he'd go to the fire and he'd stir it up. OK, then the bread was leavened by that time, by the morning, and the fire was really hot. OK, so his first procedure, he would light the fire. Second, he would mix the dough. Then he leaves it all night. Finally, the fire was ready in the morning and the dough was ready. Now, this is a picture that Hosea says, OK, this is what we call a wisdom teaching in the prophets. There's a parallel here. And you obviously have to study forever to pull out because we're not a part of this culture. We're not accustomed to these things. So we have to go into a lot of detail to figure out what you're talking about. But all this has analogies to our sin nature. OK, so we can sort of outline the procedure. There are four basic steps I've been over with you before. I'll say more about let's let's see if we can find the four analogies. Basically, he lights the fire. OK, he prepares the dough. The dough leavens overnight. The fire gets hotter and hotter and hotter by morning. Notice there's a lot of time between steps two and three. It's the time when this guy goes and takes a nap, right? He sleeps. So the first two steps occur in the evening. The last two steps occur in the morning. OK, now the fire is still still going. It's going the whole time, all night long, and it gets hotter and hotter and hotter. Also, the dough is leavening all night long. Right now, in verse six, we get the analogy on the sin nature side here for their hearts. OK, so now he's likening the sin nature to an oven. Their hearts are like an oven. In other words, the heart follows the same procedures. Their hearts are like an oven, meaning they have started. OK, this is when you start to go negative volition to the word of God in some area of life. OK, the sin nature has gotten started on a habit pattern and you keep committing, you start committing this sin over and over and over. And the sin nature is now starting to get stuck in a habitual sin pattern. And that's like the baker getting the fire started. By morning, the sin nature is totally trained into this habit pattern and is prepared to do its worst. They're locked in a negative pattern, and the sin nature at this point is just ready to jump on whatever the stimulus is that puts them over the edge. Now, what about the dough? Well, the dough is the sin pattern itself. Whatever it is that they first committed and that they didn't handle with 1 John 1, 9 procedures, And they let it grow out of control. OK, see, by morning, it's leavened the whole lump of dough. And they've committed it over and over and over in their hearts. By morning, it's worked its way into their thought patterns continually. And that is a combination for a deadly situation, literally. So he describes it. As they approach their plotting, their anger smolders all night. In the morning, it burns like a flame. OK, so see the increase it incurs? By the morning, it's a huge raging fire. Now, that was the warning of Genesis four, seven, that if you continue to feed your sin nature, there's going to come a time when you lose control of your own sin nature. It just gets it just gets so bad. Now, this is a mark, a mark of compound carnality. So the morning by morning time at the end of verse six, that's when they would take the bread and they would put it in the oven and bake it up. Right. So the oven is all hot. They put it in the oven and they make the finished product of bread. Now, at the point that it's baked and it's finished, the dough is no longer pliable. You can't manipulate it. It's a loaf of bread. It's no longer pliable. It's a finished product. So what he's saying is that once the sin nature reaches that spot where it's no longer pliable, you've done irreparable damage. Now, this thing has been heating all night. The sin nature has been working away. And you slowly move from that sin being a minor detail in life till it's overwhelming your life and there's no return. Now, Hosea 7 5 is put in there as an example of how they encouraged the fire to get going and heat up their sin nature. On the day of our king, we don't know if that was his birthday or anniversary of his coronation, but it's some kind of official holiday of the king. On the day of our king, the princes became sick with the heat of wine. OK, that means they had a big party and they had too many bottles of wine and they got sick. So they're having a big drunken party on this festive, kingly occasion. He stretched out his hand with the scoffers. Now, the scoffers, these are the people in Hebrew, Lutz, L-U-T-Z. These are the people that are not pliable. OK, they're the finished product. They're the bread that has already come out of the oven. OK, they're sin natures. are thoroughly cooked. OK, and they're just waiting to pounce on any opportunity that arises. And notice these scoffers are in the political administration. They're the princes and they are. These people are hateful to the word of God. They're arrogant. And this is the kind of person that was in national leadership. OK, so you have the king, you have the princes, all the leadership. They're all involved in compound carnality and they're all working together. And boy, let me tell you something, when You have this kind of an administration trying to govern a nation. You have got a serious problem on your hand, a serious problem. Hosea 7, 7 is the climax. All of them are hot like an oven and they consume their rulers. All their kings have fallen. None of them calls on me. Now, this is actually referring to a set of historical events in the political administration of the Northern Kingdom. Here's what happened. OK, look, look at these reigns of these men. OK, this is these these guys over here, all the southern I mean, the northern kingdom, all that's in northern. Don't worry about that. We're just interested in these guys over here toward the end of their kingdom. The ninth dynasty, Hosea, that's the end of it. OK, not Hosea, the prophet Hosea, the king. Now, the last king to rule any length of time, really, for the most part, was Jeroboam II. You can see he reigned 41 years. Look at that. OK. It was during his reign that Jonah was a prophet. We study his prophecy. You know, he runs away from God toward Tarshish and he gets his tail back in gear and heads to Nineveh and he preaches and gets upset because everybody repents. But Jonah also had another prophecy in Second Kings that talks about that the northern kingdom would become prosperous under Jeroboam II reign. And so that happened. And at the end of his reign, Hosea starts to minister. But apparently this chapter that we're reading right here. was written much closer to 721 BC, much closer to the end of Hosea's ministry, okay? Because he gives us quite a historical analysis here. Now, what had happened? Let's look at it this way, okay? What do you do the night before? You start the fire, you get the dough ready, right? Under Jeroboam, okay, we're still talking about theft and deceit, okay? Theft had been encouraged as a governmental policy. It may have been, you know, Jeroboam said, I will move this guy's boundary over there, his property boundary. It may have been negligence, but all of that is simply theft or thou shalt not steal. As time went on, it got worse and worse as you go through this list of kings. And it's like the oven getting hotter and hotter and hotter as morning gets closer. And they had less and less and less respect for private property. They had less and less respect for the sanctity of life. So the government was seizing property left and right. They were, you know, murders and so forth, all kinds of vengeance killing. Now, this is the kind of thing that had worked its way into the national life of Israel, and it began to work its way in at the upper levels of political administration. Everyone in that kingdom was trying to grab for the power position. Now, turn to 2 Kings 15 8 to see what happened. As the fire got hotter and hotter and hotter, something was taking place. You can see it, in other words, in the life of the nation Israel. They're like the fire in the oven heating up. 2 Kings 15, 8. In the 38th year of Azariah, king of Judah, Zechariah, the son of Jeroboam, became king over Israel. We just saw Jeroboam ruled 41 years. Here comes Zechariah, his son, and the verse says he ruled in Samaria for six months. You look at that six months, would you call that political instability? What happened to him? Verse 10 is what happened to him. Then Shalom, the son of Jabez, conspired against him. We have political conspiracy and struck him before the people and killed him and reigned in his place. See the power struggle taking place. So Zechariah is murdered after six months. Now we come to the next guy, Shalom, verse 13, Shalom. Son of Jabesh became king in the 39th year of Uzziah, king of Judah. He reigned one month in Samaria. One month? Why? What happened to him? Verse 14. Then Menachem, son of Gadi, went up from Tirzah and came to Samaria and struck Shalom, son of Jabesh, in Samaria and killed him and became king in his place. Okay, more political conspiracy. Another assassination. I mean, they're really heating things up. They're really cooking. This guy, Menahem, he actually makes it for 10 years, OK, because he made some military maneuvers that basically scared people in his own nation. And then, you know, when Assyria was a threat, he he appears to tax all the rich people to pay off the king of Assyria. So, you know, there's nothing new under the sun. We'll tax the rich. So he did that. OK, he died a natural death. Then Pekahiah, his son, came to the throne. He's in verse 23. In the 50th year of Azariah, king of Judah, Pechahiah, son of Menachem, became king over Israel and Samaria and reigned two years. Again, more instability. Look at verse 25. Another assassination. And that one in verse 25 comes from within his own political administration. Now, we could go on, but I think you get the picture of the social chaos that was breaking out as that kingdom declined. King after king. was conspired against and assassinated. In fact, of the 17 kings, the whole history of the Northern Kingdom from the time of Jeroboam I all the way to the end, 210 years, 17 kings, only eight died natural deaths. All the others were conspired against and assassinated by their successors. Now come back to Hosea 7 and we'll finish. This is what Hosea is talking about in verse 7, what we just went through. This real period of their history. He says, I'll show you a truth about your nation by talking about the baker and his oven and the dough. You people, you have the Torah. God told you what you should be doing. You don't do it. You don't learn loyalty to me. You're not concerned with private property. You're not concerned with the sanctity of life. You commit these atrocities over and over and over. And if a nation does that every time, it's going to come back to haunt them every time. The whole thing will go right down the drain in political conspiracy. The murders will be rampant. Now, why? The end of verse 7 is there to tell you why. None of them calls on me. It's just pathetic. In other words, even in the 11th hour of the nation, when everything was falling to pieces, one administration succeeding another administration succeeded another administration. Complete political chaos. In spite of all this, you think somebody would say, hey, you think we might have a spiritual problem? No one. Not a single person goes to God to find out what the trouble is. Now, I don't have to say anything to get the analogy clear across to this side of the world. But it's the same story, and this comes right out of the text of the Bible. Now, we've been through the text. If there are any questions, I'll field those since we have five minutes. But if not, we'll just close with a word of prayer. Yes. Yes, Carol. Using the Baker's analogy, you're saying we don't need to do it that way. That's right. You're saying nature gets hot and it gets hotter and hotter and hotter until it gets out of control and things get obviously out of control, out of control, spending out of control. Other other areas. Yes, ma'am. Where did Hosea teach these? things to the people of the northern kingdom of Israel. I really don't know. We know very little about Hosea. Obviously, we know who his children were and who his wife were. And but as far as I've gone in the book, I haven't been able to discover exactly where. I mean, obviously now Samaria is the capital. I mean, it's the chief city. And, you know, it's mentioned, I think, in verse two or something like that in our chapter. And that was sort of the heart of the kingdom. That's where the kings were and the princes were. That's where a lot of the partying was going on. That's mentioned a lot in Amos, his prophecy, too. So a lot of it was directed against them. There's a lawsuit in Amos chapter four, chapter three and four. That talk about other nations coming to watch the atrocities and chaos in Samaria as this sort of like that center stage. And but I'm not exactly sure where he preached. In fact, a lot of these chapters, it's very difficult to tell when he preached them. I said tonight, for example, this chapter seems like he preached it closer down to 721 because he's seen all these political administrations get succeeded one by the other. But some of the other chapters seem a lot earlier, you know, like the things about having the children with Gomer and so forth. That's very early. That's probably around 750. So all of of Hosea's prophecies come over the span of about 40 to 50 years. So it's difficult to tell when. And when I see there's a hint at one where earlier or later, I kind of point those out. But where is also difficult. Just probably center on the major areas. Dan, Bethel, Samaria, things like that. Places like that. All right. Yes, ma'am. Go ahead. Was Gomer a believer? Was Gomer a believer? You know, I can't. I can't. I don't know. I can tell you what she was, but that's about all that I can tell you. And if she was, you know, if she was restored to her husband, you know, in the end, as the nation Israel is restored to her right God in the end, then there's a possibility that on the tail end of things she got with the program and then she'd be another example of Rahab. So, yes, harlots can go to heaven. Murderers can too. And God is God of grace. And his son died for every sin in the world and not just the special ones that we think he got died for. He handled them all, including the ones we don't have difficulty with. And therefore, it's by grace through faith that we have an eternal relationship with him. Not because of anything that we've done, of course. So it's a possibility. All right. Let's if there's not anything else. OK, we'll just close with a word of prayer.